PROPERTY

Revolutionary RentReport released

Tenant Profile Network release its ground-breaking RentReport tool, which is set to change the face of property investment in South Africa.

Using RentReport, property owners and potential investors will have access to suburb-specific data that has never before been available for South Africa, delivered in a completely unique and user-friendly format.

What is RentReport?

RentReport is a new suburb-specific report system, which is based on all of TPN’s current information databases. These sources include TPN’s RentBook, RentBay and credit bureau data, as well as suburb demographics sourced from Stats SA population census and General Household Surveys.

How can RentReport help property investors and owners?

“RentReport generates reports which are based on a number of crucial suburb demographics,” says Michelle Dickens, managing director of TPN. “For example, the most important demographic from a buy-to-let perspective is how many properties within an area are rental properties (rental stock). This can indicate the kinds of volume of tenants are looking to rent in that area.”

Dickens goes on to explain that RentReport also distinguishes between property types in a specified area, such as townhouses, clusters or freehold properties. The database then goes on to detail rental percentages of those property categories in that area. “For example, in an area like Sunninghill [see Sunninghill RentReport attached] there are more townhouses for rent than townhouses that are occupied by owners,” says Michelle. “In contrast, there are more owner-occupied freehold properties in Sunninghill than tenants renting this type of property. Therefore, potential investors in Sunninghill properties can deduce that townhouses would be a more valuable buy-to-let investment.”

RentReport provides a holistic overview of all resident demographics and property types in an area, which is then broken down between owners and tenants. Data provided includes the average number of tenants per household, the housing dynamic of these tenants (such as singles, couples, families etc.) and the average ages of household heads,” continues Dickens. “You are also able to view the income of each household, which enables buy-to-let investors to derive the affordability of rental prices in that area based on 30% of income.”

Other fields of information specified within RentReport’s data include the employment status of tenants in a specified areas, education level and languages spoken. The report also indicates the good standing level of tenants, as well as the surrounding areas and the national average. “This means you are able to view a breakdown of payment performance in an area and allows you to analyse this performance against the national, provincial and other local averages.”

Another element within RentReport is an overview of rental prices achieved in a selected area over a six-quarter period, which is subcategorised into one, two and three-bedroom properties, and shows the average maximum and minimum rent achieved for each category over the period. “A visual graph is also supplied which indicates which price brackets the majority of rentals are being achieved The report also supplies the relevant outlying data, which shows, for example, that a three-bedroom rental price bracket can start from R 11 000.00 and up to R 18 000.00 per month.”

How do you get RentReport?

The RentReport tool is accessed through the TPN website, and is available to all registered TPN members. “An important factor to note for property owners and investors is that access to RentReport is based on data-reciprocity. This means that members are required to supply their own tenant data in order to access these aggregated rental suburb reports,” says Dickens.

In terms of technology design and user-interface, RentReport is also breaking boundaries by producing this completely unique online system. “TPN has always been committed to reassuring the navigation of our tools,” explains Dickens. “We wanted to make sure that navigation of the system is really easy and user-friendly.” The RentReport tool is based on the highly reliable and recognisable Google Maps visual system, and is constructed in an easily-navigated, simply designed platform.

In a nutshell

Until this most recent development from TPN, there have not been any similar forms of suburb-specific rental demographic information. “Most importantly, what we have achieved with RentReport is collating suburb-specific demographics and data – which is non-static and generated in real-time opposed to historical - and giving it a rental component, which is a first for South Africa,” Dickens concludes.